Urging General Electric to Remove PCBs From Hudson River

General Electric would never walk away before it completed design of an appliance or an avionics project, so why should it leave the Hudson tainted with PCBs, polychlorinated biphenyls? Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo must act immediately to confront G.E., before the Hudson is forever left with a residual of highly dangerous toxic waste.

In the Hudson Highlands, the Foundry Cove Superfund site, the most cadmium-polluted estuarine water body in the world, was cleaned up by meticulous engineering and dredging, all supervised by the Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies. The offending polluters paid nearly $100 million for the cleanup.

My research group demonstrated that, following the cleanup, animals within the cove were nearly clean of cadmium, and the iconic blue crab throughout the Hudson had lost three-quarters of its cadmium body burden. Where it once released a metric ton each year to the Hudson, Foundry Cove now releases small amounts of cadmium. This cleanup was a success owing to careful planning and completion of cleanup goals. Why can’t General Electric do as well?

We can never be sure about the cleanliness of Hudson River fish and crabs until the highly toxic PCBs are removed entirely.JEFFREY LEVINTON

Stony Brook, N.Y.

The writer, a professor of ecology and evolution at Stony Brook University, is senior author of “The Hudson River Estuary.”